Then the people came to Moses, and were saying, “We sinned, for we spoke against the Lord and against you; therefore, pray to the Lord, and let Him take away the serpent from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a serpent for yourself and put it on a signal pole; and it shall be if a serpent should bite someone, when the one bitten looks at it, he shall live.” So Moses made a copper serpent and put it on a signal pole; and it happened, when a serpent bit anyone, and he looked at the copper serpent, he lived. (Num 21:7–9)
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:14–17)
This was the figure which Moses completed by fixing the serpent to a cross, that whoever had been bitten by the living serpent, and looked to the brazen serpent, might be saved by believing. Does then the brazen serpent save when crucified, and shall not the Son of God incarnate save when crucified also? On each occasion, life comes by means of wood. For in the time of Noah the preservation of life was by an ark of wood. In the time of Moses, the sea, on beholding the emblematical rod, was abashed at him who smote it; is then Moses’ rod mighty, and is the Cross of the Saviour powerless? But I pass by the greater part of the types, to keep within measure. The wood in Moses’ case sweetened the water; and from the side of Jesus, the water flowed upon the wood.
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 13.20
On what principle did the Blood of His Only-begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honor of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence. But that brazen serpent was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of Him that suffered for us, but as a contrast; and it saved those that looked upon it, not because they believed it to live, but because it was killed, and killed with it the powers that were subject to it, being destroyed as it deserved. And what is the fitting epitaph for it from us? “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” You are overthrown by the Cross; you are slain by Him who is the Giver of life; you are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up on high on a pole.
Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 45.22
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